Jon Daniels hints Texas Rangers may not be buyers at trade deadline if team doesn’t improve

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Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer

MIDDLE RELIEF – There's more bad news than good news here. Michael Kirkman (27.00 ERA) and Joseph Ortiz (11.57 ERA) have struggled in June, leading to Kirkman being sent to the 60-day DL and Ortiz being sent to Round Rock. In Thursday night's loss to Toronto, Tanner Scheppers allowed an inherited runner to score for the first time this season. On the positive side: Jason Frasor has gotten back on track with a run of five scoreless appearances. Neal Cotts, Scheppers and Robbie Ross have all four of the Rangers' wins in June (which is a bad thing when it's your middle relievers).

Staff reports

Published: 15 June 2013 08:47 PM

Updated: 16 June 2013 12:47 AM

As the Rangers fall deeper into a slump that has seen them become one of baseball's worst offensive clubs in the month of June and lose their season-long lead in the AL West, fans are already asking who general manager Jon Daniels can pick up before the trade deadline to invigorate the team's limping lineup.

But Daniels hinted during an interview on KESN-FM this week that the Rangers may need to play better over the coming weeks to convince the front office they should even be buyers at the deadline.

“Of course,” Daniels said when asked if the team needed to prove it was worth upgrading. “And that’s not a challenge to the club. I love these guys. We’re all in it together, but that’s just the reality. If we get healthy and play to our level of talent and the makeup that’s on this team, I think you know from an organizational standpoint, we’re going to do everything we can to support them and add. Nobody wants to win as much as we do, but we’ve got to get there first. I think it’s a little premature to be talking about it as far as the trade deadline.”

As usual, Daniels declined to discuss any potential targets the Rangers could zero in on, but given the club’s deep crop of prospects – including a few, like Jurickson Profar and Mike Olt, who seem to have their paths to the big leagues at least partly blocked – the Rangers figure to be linked to just about any big name that’s available in the coming weeks. But Daniels said the club won’t pull the trigger on a trade just to make headlines.

“It depends on who the player is, what the asking price is, and maybe more important than anything, how’s the team playing? That’s the whole thing,” Daniels said. “There are definitely trade deadline pieces that can come in and make an impact, but the reality is if your team’s just doing OK, no one player’s going to turn it around no matter how good they are.”

Daniels, who said he's put feelers out in the days after the MLB Draft to see which players might be available, admitted that he’s hoping he’ll have the chance to be aggressive at the deadline. What's more, he said the team is preparing as if it’ll be a buyer in July.

“We always want to be a buyer," Daniels said. “The last three or four years when we’ve been in that mode, it’s a lot more fun than the alternative. But we need to play well to put ourselves in that position. And so 99 percent of our preparation is looking at that – who’s going to be available and what can we do and who can we add – but we still have six weeks until the deadline. A lot can happen between now and then.”

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